What is the public interest auction?
The public interest auction is a fundraiser run entirely by the 1L class that raises money to support students who do public interest work over the summer. We solicit donations from faculty, staff, alumni, parents, students, firms, and local businesses. Some donate money and some donate things to auction off. We receive all sorts of donations – things like Red Sox tickets, gift certificates to restaurants and salons, lunches and fishing trips with professors, cookies and brownies made by the librarians, and a tour of the Northwest Corner Construction project. The auction is one of the biggest social events of the year. Every year the auction has a theme, and we decorate Austin Hall accordingly. This year the theme was “Bright Lights: Bid City” and so the different rooms were decorated as different big cities – London, Paris, and New York.

What has gone into preparing for this event and what have you gotten out of the experience as a co-chair?
Almost all of the 1L class helps out with the auction. We divide the students up by committees and committees mostly help out either by asking for donations, calling alumni and asking them to donate, emailing firms, going door to door in Cambridge, or by helping process the donations and get them ready to sell, or by helping out on the night of the auction. As one of the auction co-chairs, I had the opportunity to work with a group of amazing people to try to plan and coordinate this huge event – it was definitely a  challenging experience for all of us. From coordinating hundreds of student volunteers to keeping track of hundreds of donations, to making sure everything comes together on the night of the auction, being a co-chair was a lot of work, but it was extremely rewarding. It was also a good opportunity to meet new students.

The event is always a lot of fun for students, faculty and staff. What was your favorite part of the evening? Did anything surprise you?
The event was a huge success. My favorite part of the evening was the live auction. Our auctioneers – this year Professors Elizabeth Warren and Jonathan Zittrain – were auctioning off the “right to be – or not be – in the 2010 parody.” The first bidder was the Dean of Students because they gave her a hard time this year in the parody, but then Professor Mann, who bought this item last year, got in a bidding war with Professor Warren and everyone was laughing so hard!

Why should admitted and prospective students seeking a strong public interest community choose Harvard? Why did you?
I think that students looking for a strong public interest community should choose Harvard because they can go anywhere and do anything with a degree from Harvard Law. We are a bigger law school, but as a result, we have so many more options to pick from than other law schools. Good public interest law jobs are really competitive – and since I want one, I’m glad I chose Harvard. I know that the connections and friends that I will make here, with professors and fellow students, will be of benefit for the rest of my life.

The question of whether to apply as a transfer student is the right move is up to you, but we think that a little research will show you the vast benefits of transferring to HLS. With 102 full-time professors and more than 300 courses, HLS is home to the most intellectually stimulating legal community in the world. Outside the classroom, there are 14 journals, over100 student organizations, clinical placements in approximately 30 areas of the law, and more than enough opportunities for you to experience the incredible diversity of the HLS community during your second- and third- year. For example, the Harvard Law Review encourages transfer applicants to apply for membership and several past transfer students have been successful in that endeavor.

Bottom line? Whether you are interested in constitutional law or environmental law or human rights advocacy or any number of other areas, the breadth and depth of our offerings is incredible. Whether you want to clerk at the circuit court level, follow the path to academia, or pursue a career in public service, the opportunities presented to our graduates are unsurpassed.

For more details on the transfer application process including eligibility guidelines, deadlines, and application requirements, please visit: http://www.law.harvard.edu/prospective/j…

Also, stay tuned in the coming days and weeks for blog entries of a few students talking about their experience transferring into Harvard Law School!

What is ‘Our Prison Neighbors’ and how did you come to get involved?

Our Prison Neighbors is an organization dedicated to bringing enriching programming into the prisons and to being a voice for prison reform and the humanity of prisoners. When I moved to the suburbs, I couldn’t find a way to be of service in the affluent culture. One day, driving past MCI-Concord Prison, I was struck that there was surely something in my years of special education teaching and community work that could be useful.

We recruit, train and provide ongoing support for volunteers providing the internationally recognized programs Alternatives to Violence Project, Emotional Literacy and Toastmasters as well as book discussion groups, literacy tutors, writer’s groups, father’s groups and many other programs. When possible we make public presentations on the importance of this work and the need for change in our criminal justice system to encourage the growth and development of all.

How has the organization evolved over time?

Our central programs have grown in availability, we have gained appreciation by our incarcerated participants and respect from the Department of Corrections, and we have come to know much more about the needs of incarcerated people. We have designed new curricula, and identified a number of areas where we would hope to make Massachusetts prisons more proactive. Examples are working to make the Correctional Health program aware of the many prison hospice programs and the positive effects they have had on the prisons that have them.

Other programs we have been working on include bringing programs like the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, Facing History and Ourselves and Thomas Lickona’s character education framework to the education departments, and providing books for the prison libraries from donations and free books available at town library sales. Recently we have been working to encourage the DOC to develop a green jobs vocational program so that incarcerated people can learn valuable job skills and state prisons could gain solar and/or wind energy systems.

You’re currently working to get students involved. How do you envision them working in the prison setting?

Graduate and mature undergraduate students would be welcome as outside participants in all of our programs and in time they could become facilitators and/or help design new programs and curricula. A program on negotiation skills would be deeply appreciated by many imprisoned people.

What of value about the experience might an HLS student interested in alternative dispute resolution take away?

Work with people in prison is a powerful way to experience some of the impact of our current criminal justice system, education system, welfare system and social services system. Students volunteering in our programs would have the opportunity to be trained in several internationally recognized programs. The Alternatives to Violence Project provides an experiential introduction to the power of a community based on respect and caring. While building community, participants learn skills in listening, communication, cooperation and conflict resolution. AVP is active in over 25 countries so we hope that international students and those intending on doing international work might train with us and be able to take this excellent material to ever-wider applications. The Emotional Literacy program develops the ability to identify, manage, and express one’s emotions in a mature and conscientious manner. Also anyone who intends to work with the criminal justice system in any way can benefit enormously from some first hand experience through programs with a record of providing opportunities for real growth and development.

How do you see this collaboration with HLS and the Program on Negotiation moving forward?

Our Prison Neighbors would like to work with HLS and PON to develop opportunities for students to participate in programming for prisoners in Massachusetts and to become leaders of programs related to their studies. This could be done through internships, service learning programs, or independent volunteering. We provide mentoring for our volunteers and could provide evaluations, recommendations and powerful experiences for ongoing professional development.

2L Nitya Shekar, whose interests include public interest litigation and activism, got her internship last summer with the Alternative Law Forum (ALF) in Bangalore through the Human Rights Program here at HLS. “It was really a great experience in a great city,” she said. “Bangalore is on the rise with public interest movements.” While she was there, Shekar was involved with the city’s first GLBT pride parade and anti-road widening litigation.

3L Lauren Birchfield and SJD student Iain Frame were also involved in public interest with the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) in New Delhi were. “The Human Rights Law Network provides pro bono legal services, conducts public interest litigation, participates in advocacy, and collaborates with social movements and human rights organizations. Maintaining both litigation and publishing departments, HRLN works on issues such as right to food, women’s justice, dalit rights, disability rights, and rights for persons living with HIV/AIDS,” explained Birchfield who worked specifically with the Right to Food Campaign. “I greatly appreciated how much HRLN invested in us and in our project, and how much freedom was given to us regarding the project’s construction and implementation. I found HRLN a fantastic organization to work for, and I was pleased to walk away from the internship having recognized that this – this kind of work, this kind of project – is what I want to pursue as a career.”

On the private-sector side was 2L Erin Walczewski, who spent Winter Term with Nishith Desai Associates in Mumbai. “I was interested in alternative dispute resolution and arbitration and got to do lots of research on the differences among arbitration tribunals,” she said. “I met with clients, and the attorneys walked me through how litigation worked in India. The attorneys were especially interested in how business practices differed between the U.S. and India.”

When asked how to approach the application process for public interest firms, the panel advocated being direct and having a project in mind. Respect for interns at HLRN? “It of course depends on the supervisor you get,” said Frame. “Because HRLN was so large it helps to have an idea about what you want to do when you get there… your experience will be more dynamic if you take charge.”

Concerned about needing experience in Indian or international law? “I dealt almost entirely with Indian law which was totally new to me,” said Shekar. “But since ALF is so small, the work they do is very focused and my relationship with them was more intimate… there was no hierarchy and everyone was happy to answer questions for me.” “I found my international law class from 1L year to be very helpful,” said Walczewski, “particularly in terms of understanding how international agreements work.”

HLS has commemorated a number of historical milestones in recent months including the 40^th anniversary of Terry v. Ohio, a case which held that ‘stop and frisks’ were not a violation of Fourth Amendment rights where an officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. Some believed this case to have been wrongly decided, including the man who argued the case before the Court, Louis Stokes. Later in 1968 Stokes was elected to the United States Congress and served 15 consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Stokes was honored at a recent event by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

The case itself involved two men who were stopped, searched, and found to possess guns in broad day on the streets of Cleveland in 1963 by a police officer who claimed the two to be exhibiting suspicious behavior. “I had no idea that Terry would become a landmark case,” said Stokes. “The more I talked to [the suspects, John Terry and Richard Chilton], the more it seemed to me that we might have a possibility of excluding the guns based on the testimony that this event had happened on the streets.” In the wake of such landmark cases as Miranda and Escobedo that succeeded in expanding the rights of the accused, Stokes filed a motion to suppress the evidence. “The officer had no probable cause accosting them,” he said, “They weren’t brandishing guns, running, or doing anything related to a crime.

In spite of the violence and turmoil of American cities in the sixties, Stokes was confident his case would prevail before the Court. “As a black man I understood how black males were stopped in urban settings and if they didn’t have contraband as a result of stopping subjecting them to the indignity of being stopped…they were just told to move on down the street. That’s why I took this case.” Yet in the final analysis the Supreme Court based their decision upon the safety of the police officer and failed to extend Fourth Amendment protections.

“What I say to you as law students is that it pays to think outside of the box as a lawyer,” advised Stokes. “It would have been easy for me to plead them guilty and work out some light sentence. It took more to go against the custom and utilize the Constitution to try to uphold what it means in light of what people are subjected to on the streets in our country.”

Stokes presence moved the audience to emotion. As one student asked, “Did you or your brother Carl, the first black mayor of a major U.S. city ever envision this day [the election of President-Elect Obama]? You must have because surely you paved the way.” Stokes remarked that Obama’s whole campaign reminded him of 1967 when his brother became the mayor of Cleveland. “Carl built coalition in Cleveland of blacks and white. That’s how he won. For many reasons related to what Carl did and my victory as the first black congressman in Ohio the following year, Barack Obama’s meant so much. It reminded me how far we’ve come.”

Lam is currently on a Skadden Fellowship starting a community legal clinic for low income youths and their families in Chicago. Admissions staffer Julia Foresman recently caught up with Lam in the wake of a victory he scored with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. Lam had been trying to get Chicago Public Schools to follow through with the Individualized Educational Plan that CPS and his client Mary Greenlee had put in place for her 6 year old grandson, Rayvaughn.  “It’s been extremely rewarding to educate and empower my clients,” he said.  “… this is what gets me up in the morning.”

Podcast: Lam Ho (13:09)

“SLS is unique,” said Schleelein, “we don’t see clients in our office, but in order to serve the maximum number of people and provide services to those who might not otherwise have access we offer a variety of legal clinics at homeless shelters and service centers in the greater Boston area.” These centers, at which students perform intake surveys with clients alongside a staff attorney, include: Rosie’s Place; Cambridge Multi-Service Center for the Homeless; New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans; Chelsea Soldiers’ Home; and Veterans Advocacy Network.

The Veterans’ Advocacy Network (VAN) is a new collaborative with the Massachusetts Bar Association to assist veterans with benefits issues. Law student volunteers will be supervised by Shelter Legal Services while taking calls from veterans, providing referrals, and completing intakes. Veterans are then referred to attorneys for in-depth legal assistance with their veterans benefits claims.

“Once we’ve decided to take on a case for full representation, there’s a wide variety of ways in which students can be involved,” said Schleelein. “In addition to the intake process, we also follow up with a client confirming our agreement to represent them and specifically about which issue; clients often have multiple issues and we may only be able to help with one.” Schleelein stressed that she wants students to get as involved as possible. “One of the most rewarding parts of students volunteering with us is that they can to see a case through start to finish.”

That having been said, if you’re a 1L and the idea of going to court makes you nervous, SLS is looking for help in a variety of areas, including discrete research projects. “We’re all about practical experience… we want you to work with 2Ls and 3Ls who have done it before. Not going to be thrown to the wolves.”

When asked what sorts of cases they can take on, Schleelein responded, “Not everything that comes through our door is something we can take… we’re funded through various grants the terms of which limit is from taking criminal cases and fee generating cases.”

Bogged down with classes and constrained by time? Fear not. The time commitment is what you want to make it. As you get more familiar you can take on more. “What’s key is maintaining open communication with people who have agreed to take on major projects,” said Schleelein. “The more in depth you work on a case and get to know an individual client, the more rewarding it will be; we really do work on cases that make huge differences in people’s lives.”

For interested students, Shelter Legal Services is currently accepting resumes and cover letters for their summer internship program: info@shelterlegalservices.org. The deadline for submissions is February 27.

Have a listen: Sarah Bolling (6:27)

While the situation on the ground here in Boston is still bleak, the work of Tony Borich, now a student attorney with the Legal Services Center and the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau has burgeoned into a broader effort called the Foreclosure Task Force within the law school and universities around town. “There’s usually a delay between that time when the bank takes over the property and when they bring eviction action in court, which is when lawyers can effect change,” he said. Intimidated or offered small amounts of money from banks, many tenants vacate without being fully aware of their legal rights guaranteed under Massachusetts’ landlord tenant law. “We recognized that we needed to focus on the period immediately around the foreclosure sale if we wanted to increase the number of people staying in homes as opposed to abandoning them and leaving them vacant or boarding them up,” he said.

True, there are many more potential clients than there are students attorneys to help them, but this is where the door-to-door outreach campaign ‘No One Leaves’ comes into play. “We’re helping renters who are experiencing the most egregious behavior by banks, such as illegal evictions … we’re hoping to drive up the costs of evicting tenants for banks and dissuade them in future from continuing their current policies. It’s sort of a triaged approach,” he said. “We take the winnable cases, those that most directly serve our broader goal of changing the economics of what banks are doing.”

And they have had success. Take HLAB member Dave Haller, for instance, who recently scored a $54,000 verdict against the Bank of New York for cutting off the water and heat of a Dorchester man it was trying to force out of the home he rented, which had been foreclosed on after the owner failed to make mortgage payments. The verdict may yet be doubled or tripled under the state’s consumer protection law. Short of securing representation for every client, the Foreclosure Task Force is canvassing as many homes as possible and informing people about their rights and persuading them to stay in their homes and fight. “The important part about getting to people early,” explained Borich, “is that by educating tenants and introducing them to attorneys who can help them, they start to learn through how to represent themselves. We’re doing more with less if we reach people earlier.”

Having gone to law school interested in international human rights and women’s rights work, Raghu interned with a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas for her 2L summer. “It was a great experience because the clerks were great about explaining their work; I got to read complaints, construct answers, watch trials, look at briefs, conduct discovery… the experience also piqued interest in litigation,” she said.

However, the most defining aspect of Maya’s law school career was the clinic she did during which she represented an ethnic Chinese Uighur for asylum before an immigration judge. “It was the best and worst experience… most cases finish in a semester; ours went on for 4 years, and it gave me a very real picture of what litigation is like.”

Upon graduation, Maya clerked for two years and spent the next four at a firm where she further honed her litigation skills before refocusing on public interest work. “I had done lots of pro bono work at the firm, particularly on the side of domestic workers who were undocumented,” she said. “The best thing you can do if you want to move from firm to public interest is to focus on skills such as litigation, taking depositions, and discovery work you learned at firm and demonstrate long-standing interest in public interest work.”

It was in large part her litigation experience, Maya claims, that contributed to her getting the job at Legal Momentum. As one of the few multi-issue women’s organizations, Legal Momentum (formerly known as NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund) deals with instances of sex discrimination and harassment, and focuses on issues of national importance as they relate specifically to women. “We’ve been looking at welfare and the gendered effects of poverty,” Maya explained, “as well as maintaining a longstanding focus on the economic security of women in such nontraditional jobs as construction workers, firefighters, and mechanics.” The legislative advocacy of the organization also serves victims of domestic violence who stand to lose their jobs or homes because their employers or landlords fear personal harm to their business or property.

“When taking cases, we have to be very strategic; we think: will this advance our cause? We look for policy changes and we seek to alter the structure of the way the law approaches domestic violence issues.”

Check them out on the web!